


Cool Intentions

by bwblack



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-29
Updated: 2012-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-30 07:09:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/329119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bwblack/pseuds/bwblack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A hot summer means a lot of people find excuses to visit the nicely chilly morgue.   Molly interacts with John, Lestrade, Mycroft, and Sally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cool Intentions

Molly had never been the type to underdress. Well, she never was quite as formal as some of her more fashion forward mates from university but she did make it a point to keep properly covered up while others bared shoulders, arms, upper thighs and navels. She kept covered. She always had. She couldn’t imagine changing now.

People who knew her thought that made her a bit of a prude. Maybe it did. She tried not to dwell on the labels. 

Whatever it said about her she mostly attributed her attire to function over form. 

The thing about morgues? They are cold, wickedly cold. Germs spread more readily in warm conditions. That is why whenever you visit a friend or relative in hospital you spend the whole time shivering. 

The morgue, where the preservation of the “patients” was just as important as the prevention of the spreading of germs, meant that Molly Hooper had not been warm since she got her first job.

She only owned two sleeveless shirts. She owned nothing that allowed precious heat to escape through her navel. 

She was used to people flitting in and out of her little world as fast as humanly possible. They didn’t like the patients, the smells, the proximity to death, and to have to endure all of that with numb fingers and a reddened nose was, for many, just too much. 

The thing she liked most about Sherlock was he liked the morgue. He liked the bodies. He liked the cold, any excuse to wear that coat and scarf indoors. 

Well, she clung. Of course she clung. Anybody would. People scurried away from her when she mentioned her profession faster than they would had she suddenly morphed into a mouse. What else could she do? 

So when the one man who was comfortable in her corner of the world came into her life and dressed properly for the job she thought that it was possible, if not probable, that it was meant to be.

Then came the hottest summer on record. It was hot, unusually dry.

She found herself shedding the layers she wore for her job as soon as she reached the street. Her tiny flat was stifling and the miniscule help provided by her ceiling fan and her comically small window wasn’t enough to keep things cool even at night. She couldn’t imagine being there during the day.

So, she found herself volunteering to pick up as many shifts as possible. The morgue was cool and she planned to spend as much time there as possible. Apparently she wasn’t the only one.

Friday she’d been making slides from tissue samples for a toxicology report when John Watson sauntered down into her lair. 

She perked up instantly and straightened her hair. She waited, more breathless than she would have liked to admit even to herself, as she looked past John expectantly for the moment Sherlock stormed into the room. But Sherlock didn’t come. And really she shouldn’t have been surprised. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen John lead the way into… anywhere. 

“Molly,” John greeted.

Molly tried to think of something to say other than, “Err… where is Sherlock?” Failing to think of anything she said nothing at all. It was not her most suave moment of the day, or maybe it was. That thought depressed her.

“So…”

“Buttons” She flushed hot red the moment she heard the automatic response slip from her lips. Suddenly the awkward moment of expectant silence seemed like a conversational high point of the day, maybe the decade. 

John’s brows furrowed, “Buttons?”

She quickly went through potential saves, But ums? No, that was even dafter, if that was at all possible. “Buttons” she admitted quietly. “Whenever somebody said ‘so’…. My mother would answer ‘buttons’. So…Buttons. Sew buttons. Sent the first boy I ever…” She blushed again, completely mortified to be rambling on like this, “I can’t believe I’m going on like this, I ramble when I…Darn…”

“Socks?” John asked.

“What?” Molly asked, honestly befuddled for a moment. 

“If you sew buttons you must also darn socks,” John beamed, pleased. 

Molly laughed. “Yes…’

John’s phone chirped and he started towards the door before he looked up from the screen. 

“Thanks for coming,” she mumbled.

“What?” John looked back for moment, perplexed. “I’m sorry?”

“Never mind,” Molly said still unsure of what he’d been doing there in the first place. She could only imagine he’d come to ask for something Sherlock needed, but maybe if she didn’t remind him Sherlock would pop in later. “It’s um… nothing.”

“You sure?” John was nearly out the door.

But what if it was something really important? “Why did you come down here, exactly?”

“No reason.” John shrugged.

“No, really. What do you need? It can’t be that terribly embarrassing. I’ve seen him flog corpses.”

“I didn’t need anything, really.”

“You don’t need anything? Sherlock, doesn’t need anything?” She looked incredulous.

“Just dropped into say ‘hey’,” John shrugged. 

“Is for horses.” She smirked.

She could just hear John’s laughter begin as he charged down the hall to the lift.

\--

A part of her expected, hoped, that Sherlock would come down to confess what John had really wanted. But Sherlock didn’t appear later on that day, or the next. When she finally heard the long purposeful stride she’d come to associate with Sherlock, coming down the hall towards her she freshened her lipstick and straightened her blouse. But the man who entered was not wearing a long coat, completely inappropriate for the weather; he was carrying an umbrella despite the complete lack of forecasted rain in the foreseeable future. 

“Hello? She looked at the man, puzzled. 

The man stood, silently polishing some bit of something too small for her to see on the handle of his umbrella. 

“Well?” She prompted after what seemed like an absurdly long stretch of silence. 

“Hmmm?” He looked up and regarded her, an expression of mild curiosity plainly visible on his face. 

“What are you doing in my morgue?”

Mycroft looked around the room appraisingly and back at her. “I wasn’t aware that Barts had endowed a Molly Hooper Morgue.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You shouldn’t be. It would be nearly unheard of for you to have achieved your own dedicated room in a facility as large as this at this point in your career. No, for you to have this morgue dedicated to you, you would have had to throw a considerable sum of money at it. Which would, I assume, make it a rather hollow honour. Or it would have to be bestowed posthumously. The Molly Hooper Memorial Morgue is a possibility, but a rather macabre one. And you wouldn’t be here to enjoy it…”

“I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced,” Molly interrupted, fearing this could go on forever. 

“No.” Mycroft nodded in agreement but said nothing else. 

“Well?” Molly asked getting more irate by the moment. 

“I hardly see the point.” He looked at something in the corner of the room and made a notation in small book he pulled from the breast pocket of what she had just noticed was a three piece suit. He must be boiling!

“You hardly see the point? You hardly see the point in making introductions after you saunter into my… the lab in which I am working and begin making value judgments about the trajectory of my career?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?” She’d had more meaningful conversations with her cat!

“I fail to see the point. I know who you are, Molly Hooper, I see no need to waste time on introductions or other minor formalities’.”

“You know who I am?”

“Would you like me to give you a brief overview of your CV?” He reached back into the pocket with the small notebook.

“No!” She protested, more than slightly disturbed that this man might have her history written in his left breast pocket!

“I see.”

“I would like to know who you are and what you are doing here.”

“Oh,” Mycroft pondered this for a moment and nodded. “That is a sensible enough request, I suppose.”

“Well?”

“Water,” Came a voice from the entrance to the room. 

Molly turned to see John. “Hi.” She muttered, flustered for a moment unused to having two people without official business in the morgue on any particular day. 

“Hey.. Horses.”

“Did you just call me horses?” She teased and it felt more natural than anything she’d said all day.

John took a manila envelope from his left hand and handed it to Molly’s mysterious guest. 

The man nodded, “Everything is in order?”

“As far as I know…” John seemed unsure.

“Good,” The man smiled. “I’m pleased.”

“Erm… sure.” John said. “Well, I better…” he pointed towards the stairs. “Good to see you, Molly.”

“Yeah…” Molly was unsure what was transpiring. 

John headed off while the man examined the contents of the envelope. After a few moments he stuffed everything back into the envelope it came from, smiled at her, and started for the door.

“Want to tell me what all that was about?” Molly asked, unsure if she’d been witness to some sort of cloak and dagger spy mission, a drugs deal, or maybe just Sherlock ordering a month’s supply of formaldehyde from the local mortician’s supply… no, she knew most of them by sight.

“Convection,” The man left without further explanation. 

\--

Molly sat at the desk in the corner of the room eating a ‘cold’ salad, already slightly wilted from the heat she’d subjected it to on the four minute walk from her favourite lunch spot back to the morgue. Even with the heat she hadn’t dared bring a lunch since the time Sherlock conducted an experiment in the employee refrigerator, the contents of which far too closely resembled her leftover risotto. 

She had a mouth full of lettuce when she heard a “lo” and looked up to find the detective inspector who often worked with Sherlock. 

She didn’t really know him. They’d met a few times but never really exchanged more than mild pleasantries. Still, on days when his picture appeared in the paper, quoted about some case, she always felt as if she’d almost had a brush with celebrity. “Lestrade?” She asked after she finally fished chewing, stupid roughage. 

“Hooper,” He smiled.

He looked younger when he smiled. She smiled too, but quickly stopped realizing she probably had bits of green all over her teeth. That wouldn’t do. “Can I help you with something? I think Sherlock is working on the fourth floor today, they have a new…”

“I was hoping you could help me.”

She looked perplexed. “You need directions to the fourth floor?”

“I imagine it’s up.” He looked towards the ceiling. 

She smirked. “Yeah, four floors.”

He nodded, “Not with that.”

“Okay…” She looked up at him, “would you like to sit?” Seriously they didn’t get a lot of visitors in the morgue but she’d forgotten even the most common courtesy with all of the week’s visitors.

Lestrade took the chair across from her. “Thank you.”

She nodded. “How can I help you?” She grew suddenly suspicious, remembering her last encounter. “Wait, you aren’t going to kill me conversationally, are you?”

“Spent nearly my entire career in homicide, but that would be a new one even for me.” Lestrade laughed.

“Okay, and you aren’t here on a drugs buy?”

“You sell drugs here?” He looked around curiously, “I mean hospitals have really good supply but…”

“No, no drugs… Just…” She blushed, “And it’s not a drugs bust?”

“Confessing? I could call vice.”

“No, no…” She sighed. “What is it it then?”

He handed her a file. Inside she found a photo of a corpse dead 12 hours if her read on colouring, decay and considering the current temperatures were correct, bit longer if it was a cold case. The next photo was a close up of what she assumed must be the cause of death, an oddly shaped puncture wound, in any case.

“Can you identify it? The weapon.”

“It’s not really my area… and isn’t this the sort of thing the exact reason you consult with Sherlock?” She didn’t have to imagine him puncturing perfectly nice corpses with things of all different shapes and sizes; she’d seen it first hand, more than once. 

“Mostly,” Lestrade shifted in his seat. 

“And the reason Scotland Yard employs entire forensic teams?”

“That too,” He became suddenly engrossed on a mark at the edge of her desk.

“So you need me for what, exactly?” 

“I was hoping you could identify the mark.”

“Why me?”

His eyes moved up towards her but is head remained bent in a sheepish position, “Lift is out.” 

“I’m sorry.”

“The lift, it’s…”

“You asked me to save yourself four flights?”

“A bit.” He admitted, quietly. 

“I see…”She huffed.

“I’m sorry, I should… I just thought maybe you’d….”

But the thing was, she did know. She’d seen the mark in the morgue before, the third time with Sherlock and the puncture wounds and she kept the photos in a file. She pulled the photo she remembered from the file cabinet, showed it to him for comparison, and told him the tool that made it, then she showed him the door.

\--

She was relieved when the weather finally broke the following day; it was damp, cool, and a bit windy. It was the sort of day she normally loathed but now welcomed anything to end the oppressive heat. And she suspected that her days would be back to normal, without so many intrusions. 

She was surprised and a bit annoyed when Lestrade’ssergeant came in at half past four. She had work to do, work she was paid for. Work other people weren’t. “What do you want?”

“Hello to you too,” Sally smirked.

Molly winced, chided. “Hi.” She tried for a friendlier tone.

“Lestrade said you were really helpful, yesterday.” Sally started. 

“The lift’s been fixed.” Molly interrupted. “I used it myself an hour ago.”

“What?”

“Sherlock is working on the fourth floor. You can go see him yourself. Lift is fixed. The weather’s back to normal. No stairs required.”

“Why would I want to see him? “ Sally’s face scrunched with disdain. “Who’d want to see him?”

“Nearly everybody,” Molly answered, “almost everybody that still has a pulse when they get here and probably a few that don’t…”

“I can’t imagine why,” Sally snorted.

“He’s brilliant!”

Sally shrugged. “Lestrade said you were pretty good, too.”

Molly brightened. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“What brings you down here? It isn’t that I mind the company, really, it’s just that the weather’s lifted and well… most people don’t come down here if they don’t need to… don’t like the bodies.”

“See plenty of bodies in my job, I’m not fused,” Sally smiled.

Molly hadn’t thought of that. “I suppose you do, still…”

“I…” Sally looked at a spot at the floor and back up at Molly. “It’s just that Lestrade said you were really helpful, and you’ve always seemed nice enough, friendly when we’ve run into one another before… and…” Sally trailed off.

“And?” Molly was truly curious, now. 

“I could use some help with the science. That’s your field, right? You’re a scientist?”

Molly nodded, always pleased to be thought of as such, “Pathology, mostly.”

“Well, I don’t get it.”

“Pathology?”

“No… well, that too… but the science. Look, I wasn’t complete crap at school, honest. I worked hard, did alright. I went to university and everything, passed all my classes, too. It’s just when I joined the department I thought it was all chasing criminals, interviewing people in interrogation rooms, catching them in lies. I’m good at telling when people are lying… well, excluding men I’m dating.” She laughed a little.

Molly smiled. 

“But the thing is the other stuff, the stuff Sherlock knows, stuff Anderson knows… that’s really important too. And I know I’ll never be brilliant at it. Not going back to school, where would I find the time for that? But I just, I’d like to be a little more fluent… and I thought maybe…”

“You’re serious?”

“If it’s not too much trouble? I should take a class. I know I should take a class. But I work these crazy hours and well… You’re here a lot and I thought maybe… I mean it wouldn’t have to be here, we could grab a pint… and it wouldn’t all have to be shop talk… Maybe John could join us sometimes, he should get out more.”

“Could you teach me something, too?” Molly asked, intrigued.

“I can’t imagine what, but…”

“The lying thing? I can’t read people at all.”

Sally smiled, “So… tomorrow night? The pub across the street? I’ll buy.”

“I’d like that,” Molly agreed. “I’d like that a lot.”


End file.
